This one thing doubled my productivity
The underrated power of single-tasking
Multitasking is a myth. There, I’ve said it.
I was brought up to believe that multi-tasking was an ‘essential’ skill and that if you weren’t doing multiple things at once you were somehow a productivity failure. How wrong they were.
Multitasking is a myth because it isn’t possible to literally do multiple things at the same time.
When we talk about multitasking, we’re actually referring to a series of rapid context switches.
This is where your brain flits from one thing to the next and has to readjust. This is a real productivity sap. There are various studies that have tried to quantify exactly how much productivity is lost due to context switching. Some come out at 30% and some even more.
Either way, I think we can agree that multitasking isn’t an efficient way to work. Lots of stuff started, nothing finished.
What’s the solution?
This is where the art of single-tasking and hyperfocus comes in.
This blog is inspired by what I learnt from Chris Bailey’s book, ‘Hyperfocus’ and my experience implementing it. This blog isn’t intended as a…